350 Killed in Garment Building Collapse

Thirty Bills Unpaid

unsung wrote:

I stayed in Tallinn, Estonia for two weeks a few years back. Through conversation with some locals I found that I was paying more for each night in the hotel than a staff member made in a month. After that I tipped at a much higher percentage. That's about the best way to help. On another trip, I did a tour of Chernobyl and the guide was ex-military and cool as fuck. He let me lag behind so I could get photos without people in them. I tipped him at the end and he gave me his contact info for better pictures, gave me the official trip itinerary that had the checkpoint stamps on them, and was elated that he got the equivalent of $20.

You obviously did this before seeing Chernobyl Diaries

But to your scenarios- not unlike mine. It's good to know you were aware of your 'privileged position'. I think at a minimum... this is what needs to occur. I can't recall how many times spoiled patrons behaved poorly because their mojito was taking too long... or, laughably, the workers didn't speak English. :roll:

unsung

I really try to blend in when I travel, but no matter what they can tell. I used a porta-john in St. Petersburg and was charged more because she knew I wasn't Russian. Can you imagine that happening in the US in 2013? Lawsuit!

Anyway there's no point in traveling and proving the assumption that everyone from the US is an a-hole. I work to prove otherwise.

unsung

Oh yeah, terrible movie. I meant to watch the credits to see where it was filmed but it wasn't shot there. The view of the plant made it seem like it was 300' away, in reality it's over a mile from Pripyat. Nothing matched except for the scene that they are in the building with the bear.

unsung

brianlux wrote:

Great discussion here, everyone.

This brings up the difficult question of how do we end poverty in the world when, as the Earth Institute at Columbia University states, "more than one billion people--one-sixth of the world's population--live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day"?

I'll throw in my Ron Paul thought on this. Paraphrasing, foreign aid only takes from the poor of a donating country to give to the elite of the receiving country. Warlords/politicians/corruption always gets their cut first. How do we get help directly to those that need it? I have no idea.

Godfather.

unsung wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

Thirty Bills Unpaid, very good point.

insted of calling out the American consumer we might start qoestioning the government in Bangladash and the enforcment of building codes....if they have any ?

Godfather.

The consumer has the ultimate power. The consumer is to blame. The rest are simple cogs in the wheel, the consumer drives the bus.

I don't know about bame, all consumers world wide for the most part buy as they can afford so you could also blame world business for feeding the machine that is outsourcing.

Godfather.

unsung

Why do you think outsourcing exists?

brianlux

unsung wrote:

brianlux wrote:

Great discussion here, everyone.

This brings up the difficult question of how do we end poverty in the world when, as the Earth Institute at Columbia University states, "more than one billion people--one-sixth of the world's population--live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day"?

I'll throw in my Ron Paul thought on this. Paraphrasing, foreign aid only takes from the poor of a donating country to give to the elite of the receiving country. Warlords/politicians/corruption always gets their cut first. How do we get help directly to those that need it? I have no idea.

Do you believe that is what these people do?:

http://www.heifer.org/

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

unsung

No.

I was speaking about direct government to government transactions. I should have clarified. Those organizations have many private donors and are not funded by forced confiscation. Well, at least as far as I know.

Private organizations are probably the best and most effective way to make a difference.

brianlux

unsung wrote:

No.

I was speaking about direct government to government transactions. I should have clarified. Those organizations have many private donors and are not funded by forced confiscation. Well, at least as far as I know.

Private organizations are probably the best and most effective way to make a difference.

Yeah, I think that is true as well.

Godfather.

unsung wrote:

Why do you think outsourcing exists?

compition for the consumers money... leaving the consumer with little choice and the other reason is that in the corprate world world dommance is power(yes I know this for fact)
believe me I understand what you are saying and in some areas agree with you but.....we the consumer buy what we can afford or find,when was the last time you tried to buy an Americam made T.V or stereo ?
if you want American made products you really have to do some resurch or read the fine print on the lables.

outsourcing is a tool of profit for corprations, investers are the bottom line, a corperation is fed a large portion of it's money from investers and these investers want a return on their money or else they invest elsewhere so the quick minded CEO,presidents and so on of these large corp's realize that building their products in say Poland or china where labor cost,taxes,property perches's and enviormental control are much cheaper not to mention the fact that they have the opertunity to control another piece of the business map, once a corp has built enormis wealth the game then moves to power more so than money almost, ya see there is so much more to doing business than what the customer wants the customer will always be there , the power is the real game and these small business like the one in bangladash only compete for the opertunity to sell their goods to the larger corp's that really run the wheels of business and these larg corps don't give a flying fuck if their building colapses or not they just want their product and if the structer colapeses they will just move on to another supplier, the consumer will never know the differance.

Godfather.

cincybearcat

Some great questions posted. In reality, what we see in these countries is not different from what occurred in other countries as manufacturing developed.

I need more time to think about this.

brianlux

cincybearcat wrote:

Some great questions posted. In reality, what we see in these countries is not different from what occurred in other countries as manufacturing developed.

I need more time to think about this.

That's true. In fact, workers in manufacturing here in the U.S. in the 19th century were stuck with horrible working conditions. Unfortunately, the story mostly ends thus far with our outsourcing of manufacturing to countries that allow the same kind of horrible conditions we did 150 years ago.

Jason P

Even if the US and other "1st world" countries made their garments locally and refused to import, these shops would still exist.

Sad.

chadwick

being in a high dollar hotel (in another country mind you) being catered to like kings & queens when surrounded by poor would make me feel uncomfortable as well. sure i'd like the hotel. in reality the true self of that area is not a luxurious sprawling hotel but the naturalness of it. whatever that means...

take me to the jungle huts & a marijuana salesman on the beach under a few palms. to much being catered too makes me feel like a flaming little prancing around chadwick in a pink tutu.

I've never had this kind of money & it seems wonderful but actually is scary truthfully

chadwick

i've just watched 1/2 of a short video on the torture of Bangladesh women. wtf

:evil: where's seal team 6 these days? :twisted:

Jason P

They caught the fugitive owner. The local politician is still on the run.

polaris_x

the notion that without these corporations provide jobs is the same as industrial farming provides food ... it's simply a rationalization so that when people go to walmart and buy shit they don't need - that they feel good about themselves ...

globalization has killed the local economies in developing countries ... it has straddled these nations with massive debt and all it aims to do is keep these countries at low levels of development so western corporations can continue to exploit whatever it is worth exploiting ... resources and labour ...

cincybearcat

brianlux wrote:

cincybearcat wrote:

Some great questions posted. In reality, what we see in these countries is not different from what occurred in other countries as manufacturing developed.

I need more time to think about this.

That's true. In fact, workers in manufacturing here in the U.S. in the 19th century were stuck with horrible working conditions. Unfortunately, the story mostly ends thus far with our outsourcing of manufacturing to countries that allow the same kind of horrible conditions we did 150 years ago.

Right and in some cases a terrible thing. Did you notice how it mentioned some of these manufacturing plants rent Fire Extinguishers for just the day of inspections? It seems they have quite the way to try and avoid any oversight by the companies outsourcing.

And in some cases, outsourcing is done only in the short term, until the market is solid and provides enough demand to warrant a company building their own manufacturing plant in the area. But that is hardly the norm.

Godfather.

polaris_x wrote:

the notion that without these corporations provide jobs is the same as industrial farming provides food ... it's simply a rationalization so that when people go to walmart and buy shit they don't need - that they feel good about themselves ...

globalization has killed the local economies in developing countries ... it has straddled these nations with massive debt and all it aims to do is keep these countries at low levels of development so western corporations can continue to exploit whatever it is worth exploiting ... resources and labour ...

as sad as it may be remember the golden rule.

wal mart employs more people than any single corp's in the world and they maybe one of the richest corp's in the world and yes they like many other corp's buy their products from around the world
creating job outside of wal mart, they pay small wages and buy in bulk to cover all their stores so they get a lower price when they buy,this is the intent of most large corpations.

western corp's...I would agree with you but at the same time I have to stan in aww at the vision these people had and the drive and determination that they had to build their empires, but it's not just western corp's it's world wide,Japan and China have some impresive business's as well not to mention the piece of pie that Canada holds in the business world.

Godfather.

Godfather.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... le4372876/

greed and profit know no boundries, but then again these people have vision and drive, they worked for it why would they give it away ?

Godfather.